Decentralized CDN and DDoS Protection on the Blockchain. An automated marketplace where you can rent out your spare bandwidth and storage as well as purchase content delivery and DDoS protection services.

What is Gladius?

Gladius or Gladius.IO is a computerized marketplace that allows users to rent their extra bandwidth and storage space while earning a form of currency known as Gladius tokens in return. The overall purpose of a service like Gladius is to provide extra protection to people, businesses, and their websites from what are known as DDoS attacks, or a distributed denial-of-service attack.

A DDoS attack is a specific form of cyber-attack in which a website and its network source are overwhelmed with traffic and cannot keep up with the number of different requests being made, which essentially makes the website unusable. What makes a DDoS attack unique is that the traffic is being generated from countless amounts of sources at once, so the site’s security is usually not able to identify a specific source that is causing the attack and block them.

Most often the targets of DDoS attacks are businesses, as the disruption of service means they cannot process customer orders or requests, which can result in substantial lost revenue for the company, as well as a loss of trust or security with their customer base.

How Does Gladius Work?

As DDoS attacks have become more common and costly, websites are now taking precautions to prevent against such an attack. The most common form of protection is spending thousands of extra dollars a month on additional bandwidth just in case a DDoS attack occurs, and it is needed. As a result, many sites end up paying for a lot of extra bandwidth that they don’t ever use just on the chance that they should suffer an attack. It is an extremely expensive and inefficient form of protection that often leads to large amounts of bandwidth just going unused.

This is where Gladius comes in. It intends to pool together all this unused bandwidth to provide an inexpensive and far more efficient method of DDoS protection that are designed specifically to address a business or website’s needs. Their intent is not just to protect against potential attacks, but to also optimize the performance of the site for users, which will provide an overall improved experience for visitors and customers.

In practice, Gladius sets up the protection pools around the world and allows that user or site to connect with these pools depending upon where they are located and utilize the amount of bandwidth they need to handle a DDoS attack should that ever occur, or simply utilize what they need to make their site run smoothly.

Features and Benefits of Gladius

Gladius delivers their product through an interface that is designed to be familiar but practical and efficient – much like the idea behind the product itself. The desktop client provides a clear view of the total profit earned and gives clear dashboard of options and statuses. It monitors and demonstrates your bandwidth through an easy to follow real-time graph, as well. It also keeps you aware of any potentially malicious bandwidth the site has encountered that day.

The official website for the product details a variety of other benefits and features, including the ability to rent out your own bandwidth, create pools of your own, and grow your protection according to what your site needs or doesn’t need.

The features of Gladius are not flashy, but they are not trying to be. They are trying give you the  tools to help take on a largescale problem and simplify and manage your role in that issue as practically as possible.

The Gladius Token Sale

The token sale has been completed by this point, after it was started in November of 2024, while the launch is slated for March 2024. Prior to the sale it was established that they would adhere to the distribution of 60% for public release, 20% for operations, 10% to the founders, and 10% to the team.

The maximum supply of tokens was set at 96,320,000 GLA, with 68,000,000 GLA being made available for the public immediately upon launch. The minimum amount for a public sale is set at $2 million, with the maximum be set for $12.5 million. This allows for the product to be immediately effective while user bandwidth is added and made available to be rented out through pools that are built over time.

Who’s Behind Gladius?

The team behind Gladius formed relatively recently towards the beginning of 2024. The core members are all quite young, as they met and formed as undergraduates at the University of Maryland College Park. The three co-founders are Max Niebylski, Alex Godwin, and Marcelo McAndew, and they are the CEO, CTO, and COO respectively. All have experience in the areas of programming and development, and all strongly state the importance of focusing on decentralization.

While the founders of Gladius are all quite young, and some could say inexperienced, they are supported by an experienced team behind them. To handle areas such as business strategies, marketing, and security, they have filled the positions with more veteran and professionally experienced individuals. This should provide peace of mind that the ICO is in capable and practiced hands, while still maintaining the youth and forward thinking that got the idea off the ground in the first place.

Conclusion

Overall, Gladius is a well-timed and potentially very beneficial idea for many sites and owners that are currently paying astronomical fees for insurance in case of an attack. Currently, DDoS attacks are occurring more and more frequently, which creates a need for reliable protection at a more affordable price. There is a definite market for this ICO and it has the potential to be applied in a wide-ranging manner, even providing security for national or governmental agencies.

The applicability of the idea to smaller, independently-owned websites that are looking to cut down on costs and improve the responsiveness and general service of their site, while also protecting against something potentially disastrous is its greatest immediate appeal. It can theoretically pay immediate dividends for countless sites currently operating and could grow to service larger agencies and companies.

There is some trepidation given the relative inexperience of the team behind Gladius, but their inexperience and youth does not undercut the potential effectiveness of their idea, and how it can
grow.

By addressing a public issue through practical means being made available to site owners and individuals while also attacking the issue through its founder’s stated goals of decentralization, the product can kill two birds with one stone, and gives it a potential foot-hold in a market that looks to grow over the coming years. We think it is worth it to continue to monitor growth and viability of Gladius.

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